Starbucks To Grow Its Own Coffee Beans In China

In March 2011, Starbucks will celebrate the 40th anniversary of its first store. And while the company has since grown into the beverage behemoth we all know today, it has never attempted to actually grow its own coffee beans. That’s all about to change as the Starbucks CEO announced yesterday that they are going to be going the DIY route in China.

“We’re going to actually plant trees and grow coffee in China, in the Yunnan Province,” CEO Howard Schultz said during a visit to Beijing.

Starbucks has been selling coffee in China for 12 years and has opened up around 1,200 outlets in the country during that time. So Schultz sees the decision to launch the bean-growing operation as “a comprehensive strategic commitment to doing business in China, in a way that’s locally relevant.”

Apparently the growing conditions in Yunnan make for some damn fine coffee, so Starbucks plans to not just use the beans it grows there for the local markets.

“We’ve discovered a part of the area there that can produce the world’s best coffee,” said Schultz. “And in three to four years, we will bring coffee from Yunnan to the world.”

In addition to opening their own farming and processing facilities, Starbucks says it will aid other Yunnan coffee farmers in improving the yield and quality of their crops.

Well since China has some horrible issues with tainted soil due to lack of regulation I think I will pass on Chinese coffee just as I pass on Chinese vegetables. There were (probably are still) problems where they were burying old electronics and it was poisoning the ground water and soil with lead and other heavy metals.

No, they’ll simply call it “Produced in Yunnan” and prey on America’s general lack of knowledge of geography and make it sound like some exotic coffee growing region being discovered by Amazon Exlusive.

Hawaii produces some of the best coffee in the world. Kona/Hilo/smaller island coffee is about 5x the wholesale price of any other bean, even if purchased on the island.
No other US climate is appropriate, though Mexico makes some great coffee.

What took so long? Much of our commercial robusta coffee comes from Vietnam. Indonesia produces great coffee. There are plenty of Asian lands that would be great for coffee plantations. Hawaii has a huge transplanted coffee economy. History has shown that it can be done, as long as demand is high and corporate money is flowing.

I hope this does not depress coffee prices so that current coffee producers suffer (but we know that it is almost guaranteed to do so).

So this is going to be like the opposite of fair trade coffee? Starbucks decided it wasn’t quite evil enough so it hopped into bed with the world’s largest oppressive government? Between the literal poisons in Chinese goods, and the oppressive conditions under which they’re made, I think I’ll have to start getting my coffees elsewhere.

I just 12 days in China and Vietnam and top be honest with you I didn’t really notice a issues, problems with the food. They also eat far less processed food than most American’s so even if there are more issues, which there may be, the food is far less altered than the diet that most American’s consume. The air is not the best in the world but the food seemed fine